


House of Llyandryn - Season One

by folie-a-deux (fuck_me_barnes)



Series: House of Llyandryn [1]
Category: Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Brujah, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Holocaust, Idiots in Love, Light BDSM, Multi, Survivor Guilt, Vampire Family, Vampire Sex, Vampires, blah blah vampire emergencies blah, delicious angst, season one, sexy assassins, vampire romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 12:43:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1818958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuck_me_barnes/pseuds/folie-a-deux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which we meet our...heroine?...returning back into Kindred society after a half decade of self-imposed isolation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Season One - Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> Be gentle, it's my first time using this site. This is the first episode of the first season of the "Remixed and Remastered" edition of these fics, which were initially only shared with a small writers' circle starting back in 2009. It is a massive re-edit that I'm working on to improve clarity and continuity for public consumption. All new entries will be referred to in a season/episode format.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we meet our heroine, trying to get back into Kindred society and reconnect with other vampires.

On the plane she folds her hands, an uncharacteristically prim gesture. But all of this, really, is unusual. She looks out the window of the plane, into the empty darkness of the night sky. Flying to Florida, on an impulse, to visit someone she'd just met.  
  
And she is a bit scared, irrationally. Stupid really, this girl who has stood against the Sabbat, the werewolves, countless horrors, shit, fucking  _Nazis_ , and she is afraid of this  _boy_. Nervous. It's silly. Sheldon Goldstein, Brujah Primogen of St. Augustine, was one of the least threatening Kindred she had ever met.  _He's got to be half my age_ , she thinks and stifles a laugh, and, on the heels of that,  _Can you love without a heart?_  
  
In her chest, under her rib cage, she imagines briefly that she feels the empty space as a physical ache.

* * *

  
  
It had been a while since she'd been back out in the world, half a decade before she'd just retreated from everyone, rarely leaving her haven save to feed, barely communicating with her Clan, the other Brujah, and hardly ever making appearances at gatherings, only occasionally poking her head in at large Elysiums or other puffed-up vampire "events", otherwise known as flimsy excuses for murder. Socializing with other vampires always carried a risk, and the consequences of that risk was, not infrequently; death. And yet at the same time, vampire society, deadly as it was, afforded one a certain sort of protection, through a thin veneer of civilization laced heavily with distrust.  
  
And then there was her "family". Clan Brujah, by and large, were known nowadays for their explosive tempers and their thuggish nature, and she found their desire to "tear down the system" and "fight the man" without thought to what came after it exhausting and moronic. They were, she thought, a far cry from the "warrior poets" that they'd been romanticized as in the past. Jackbooted morons, by and large, though she had to admit that every once in awhile, there was a rare gem hiding amongst the Rabble. And yet, they were her family, she supposed, the blood tying them together the closest connection she had left with anyone, anymore, these nights.

* * *

  
She'd had to admit to herself that she'd been lonely for too long, and when she'd decided to join the others in Ohio, attend a Rant for the first time in those five years - she had caught him looking at her, and thought _well. It's been a long time since I had a lover, and this one's an easy enough bet.  
  
_ He looked sweet, standing there, his brown curly hair slightly mussed, brown eyes wide and warm, affecting a bow tie as some sort of ironic statement she didn't quite follow nor cared to explore. Most importantly, he was young, and idealistic, and kind, and trusting, and _safe_ , and she could use a little _safe_ , could use, actually, a _lot_ of _safe_ now that she thought about it. And he'd heard of the stories about her, had been fed the tales and the legends by some of the others, who she was, what she had done. And yeah, okay, he was kind of cute.  
  
It wasn't hard to get his number, crooking her finger at him from across the room, telling him, "You. You want to be husband number five?" with a knowing smile and a wink. Just doing what was expected of her, falling back onto old habits, knowing smirks and come-hither looks. Hardly any effort at all. It wasn't hard to arrange the visit. It wouldn't be hard to get him to fall in love with her. And he was a nice Jewish boy besides. A lawyer, he'd told her with a laugh. Before he was Embraced, and after.  
  
She'd smiled at him prettily, her right hand going to rub, unconsciously, at the six numbers tattooed on her left forearm, hidden under her long sleeve. He'd invited her back to his home city, St. Augustine, Florida, after the gathering concluded, and she'd accepted with barely any hesitation.  
  
 _Time to get back into the world._

* * *

 

And he is standing there, waiting for her as she deplanes, brown eyes smiling up at her as if she'd hung the moon. She has to stifle a laugh at his earnestness.  
  
She'd been lonely too long. Far too long.  
  
"Katja. Welcome to the Domain of St. Augustine," he says to her kindly, and reaches out his hand for her to take as she steps down onto the tarmac. Before she even touches his skin, she gauges the measure of him.  
  
  
 _He will not hurt me_ , she decides.  _I know it._

* * *

 

The city is haunted, no doubt, more than anything she's ever seen. It's almost a novelty to her when she gets off the plane, after the dreary, barren gray metal... _squareness_...of Chicago. Here, there are palm trees everywhere and Spanish-influenced architecture, rounded curves and coquina stone worked in the buildings. Where Lake Michigan is forbidding and cold, in St. Augustine, the ocean is inviting, and warm. But the ghosts, though. They frighten her, a little, though she doesn't let on to it. She has faced down ghosts before. She is made of ghosts. Haunted.  
  
He suggests, on the second evening, that he show her around and do some sightseeing, and she agrees, amused by his gallantry. The city is beautiful, but in all truth she is only half focused on the tour. All she has to do is turn and look at his face, catch his eye, take his hand. A pleasant distraction, when he smiles, it almost makes her dizzy...and she can't  _help_  this. It's all coming back to her now, easy as pretending to breathe, how to play this game.

She has to laugh; it's like being a teenager again ( _whatever that was like_ ), both of them terrified of the other and yet compelled to move closer, every movement, gesture, and spoken word just  _this_  side of awkward, so deliberately self-conscious. That and the complete and utter  _foreignness_  to her of St. Augustine makes it all feel surreal, dreamlike, like she is watching a movie of herself...falling in love.

  
It is  _delicious_. 

* * *

  
  
When they enter his haven, later but not  _too_  late, she is brought, briefly, back down to earth.   
  
At first, she pretends not to notice the trail of red rose petals leading to the master suite. But this is too impossible to ignore, and so she sweeps a glance up at him through her eyelashes, gauging his expression, letting a smile slowly surface on her face to match his own and hoping it will mask the sudden stab of exhilaration in her ( _heart_ ) chest. He, on the other hand, is not so good at concealing his nerves. This reassures her, makes her grin a little bit. _Got him on the run._  
  
 _Very well then, I'll take the lead_ , and in a sudden surge of boldness she walks ahead of him, following the path so clearly laid out for her, letting her hips sway enticingly as she walks. Through the room, impulsively, she moves past the bed, where it is quite clear she is intended to end up before dawn, and instead heads out onto the terrace, where, looking out over the ocean, she can see the arising storm.  
  
It is hot, and it is heavily humid, the kind of weather that makes even the lightest, most delicate linens stick to your skin insolently. Dark, and quiet. All the windows of the condo are open wide, despite the fact that there had been barely a breeze to speak of all day. Her heels click quietly over the stone terrace.  
  
"Storm's coming," she whispers, and looks out over the beach, the seemingly endless stretch of water before her. The view is beautiful, and she shudders and closes her eyes, suddenly chilled despite the stagnant gravity of the heat. She can see the thunderclouds rolling ominously in, lightning in the distance moving closer.  
  
A wind begins to whip up, out of nowhere, but it provides little relief from the overbearing heat and humidity.   
  
Without turning around to face him, she raises her arms over her head, unties the shoulder straps, tilts her head back slightly, and lets the sundress she is wearing drop to the ground. A flash of lightning illuminates her silhouette, and it is then that he can see the full extent of her scars, from the tops of her thighs up to her shoulder blades, the round circles of cigar and cigarette burns, the long stripes of the lash that criscross her pale flesh. The numbers so hatefully inscribed on her left forearm, over sixty years ago, seem to glow briefly in the harsh burst of light.  
  
She stands perfectly, gracefully still, on her tiptoes, stretched towards the sky, and emits a low, quiet laugh. There's a beat that feels like forever, and then, the rain starts to fall. _Perfect timing._  She was sure he'd appreciate the romanticism in the gesture, the picture of her body silhouetted against the stormy sky, the water coursing over her skin. After a moment, she lowers her arms to her sides, her heels to the ground, slowly.  
  
Her voice is low, thick with promise, a challenge **:**  "This is your last chance to back out." And she looks over her shoulder, finally, through the rain to meet his gaze.

To her amusement (and, she was forced to admit, a small amount of relief), all she can see in his eyes is desire...and kindness, incredibly enough,  _kindness_ , and the oncoming storm suddenly cracks the world wide open with claps of thunder and brilliant hisses of lightning, and she is no longer apprehensive, no longer indecisive, not anymore and when he takes her in his arms and kisses her, then, and lies her out across the rose-petal-strewn bed, surprisingly gently, as if she were some fragile thing he could break, she very nearly ruins it by laughing.  
  
Nearly.   
  
But, thankfully, the urge to laugh passes very quickly, and the thunderstorm raging overhead provides cover, drowns her cries out as he makes love to her. The cries are mainly for his benefit, and also, to some degree, hers: trying to convince the both of them that she feels something. Anything at all.


	2. when you lie down and when you awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn a bit more about our heroine, and how she got her name, and there are a lot of things she'd rather not think about.

She knows what they all call her, behind her back as well as to her face, and she hates it almost as much as she hates her own name.

 

Bracing herself for the chill Chicago wind, she heads out to her car.  _Black Widow_ , the other Brujah say, a joke at her expense, at her horrific luck to have lost so many lovers. As if she had wished any one of them ill or caused their deaths directly. As if she were somehow cursed. How everybody in the whole fucking Clan felt that they should  _warn_  him, when they found out.

As if she were trying to collect hyphens after her name, like a string of pearls.

She starts the engine, pulls out of the parking lot.

* * *

Here is how she got her name: by accident.

When she first came to Chicago in the late nineties, she was pissed off, mostly at having to cut and run so quickly, relocate so far away. Someone in an alleyway outside of _(then-)_ Prince Kennedy's court, seeing she was a new face, asked her her name. She told them the name she had assumed for her purposes in the States, and then put on a brave face and cheerfully invited the individual ( _Buzz? Was that his name?_ ) to fuck off, because that was one of the only phrases she'd memorized. Then he asked her surname -  _"Katja what?"_  - to which she stupidly said "Nothing", because when she arrived she couldn't speak English very well, her tongue tripping over the English language, which she made thick with Russian-accented consonants and vowels. She had meant to say something like "Never mind" or "none of your business" but the colloquialisms evaded her. 

So, that is how she was introduced to her Primogen and Prince and the whole of Chicago that rather balmy night in September, and so that is what she was called and who she became.

She hates her name. But it'll do. 

* * *

She arrives back at her haven, just one of a handful of boltholes she has in the city. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary. This place is one of those "garden apartments", which is a poetic way of saying that it used to be a basement, has only one set of small windows set six feet high off the ground that can be easily covered to avoid any and all natural light, and costs a fraction of what other, better appointed apartments go for in this neighborhood. The furnishings within were fairly sparse, she didn't come here often. If nothing else, the best feature of the place was its oversized, ancient clawfoot tub in the bathroom, which, she assumed, the apartment building must have been built around, as there's no logical way it would have ever fit through the door.

She flops down on the worn couch with a sigh, and remembers.

She dreams of the sultry evening heat warming her skin, and his friendly brown eyes, and the way he'd smiled at her. The salt smell of ocean in the air. She paces her empty apartment, restless, frustrated.  _We have always been a passionate people_ , she thinks with a small smile as she draws a bath, ignoring the fact that much of her passion is gone.  _The water_ , she thinks,  _will relax me. Must relax me. I can't take much more of this._  
  
It is nearly four in the morning, and she knows she must sleep soon as she pours in a small amount of bath oil. She can feel the weight of the sun pulling her down, like a heavy sedative. But there is no tranquility in this exhaustion, and she has not felt _alive_ in such a long time...so frustratingly, wonderfully, incredibly fucking  _alive_ , no matter how hard she tries. It is a compulsion, almost a high anxiety running through her bones.   
  
She lies back in the perfumed water, sliding in all the way up to her neck, letting its warmth suffuse her whole body until she nearly feels human again. Nearly. It is silent in the bathroom, save the small ripples she makes in the water. The only light comes from one lit candle, placed on the corner of the gigantic Roman tub.  _Has it really only been a day?_  
  
Her eyes close. It hadn't been so bad. She'd not mind doing it again. Lie twined in the sheets, laughing until sunrise, running her fingers through his curly brown hair and tracing the shape of his face. She hasn't laughed, really laughed, in a long time. Unconsciously, she turns and presses her forehead to the cool, smooth tile wall.  _You could fit two people in here_ , and she nearly laughs out loud.  
  
And there is still the fear, the terrible anticipation. Everyone she loves, she knows with the certainty of experience, comes to be cursed. To die, or disappear, or both things. It would be best for him, really, if she never returned to St. Augustine, never kissed those lips again. Hold him at arms' length to keep him safe. The idea makes her wince, makes something crush a little in her chest, curls her palms into fists ready to fight.  _No_. There has to be a way to get around this. Somehow. He would make her feel alive, and she would protect him. _Just like you've protected all the others before him_ , she thinks, traitorously.  
  
She submerges herself entirely under the water. No breath escapes her lips. She lies there, still and unmoving, for a full five minutes. Her eyes open. The warmth of the water overtakes her, a dull ache of longing suffusing her whole body, and it is then, under the water, that she begins to pray, and to remember.

* * *

 

 _Sh'ma Yisraeil, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad_  
  
It is...November? 1939. This is what she guesses. All the memories, they have not come back, mostly because she does not want them to. But there was a raid, in the...house? and her children - there was so much yelling, and the lights, and she could not understand - and they shot him, for resisting, or maybe for sport, or maybe both things, grabbed her by the arm and held her, held her and laughed, and shot her darling babies dead, one boy, one girl  
  
 _V'ahavta eit Adonai elohecha,  
B'chawl l'va-v'cha,  
u-v'chawl nafsh'cha,  
u-v'chawl m'odecha.  
V'hayu had'varim haeileh,  
Asher anochi m'tsa-v'cha hayom, al l'vavecha_  
  
and she does not like to recall their faces, their names. Some days they are on the tip of her tongue or when she closes her eyes and gets a sudden flash of their faces, they are there, waiting for her.  _Better to forget_ , and she pushes the images away. The tattoo, she knows, was given to her in Auschwitz, 1942. She is, inexplicably, a survivor. Sometimes there is a glimpse, a flash of memory about that that rises to the surface before she can push it down. And then it is gone. And when the raid on the Masters complex ( _he had been husband #2, Archon Cullen Masters, he of the wide smile and the bravado that she thought could protect her, she thinks with a wince_ ) a decade ago was executed,  
  
 _V'shinantam l'vanecha, v'dibarta bam  
b'shiv-t'cha b'veitecha,  
uvlecht'cha vaderech,  
uv'shawch-b'cha uvkumecha._  
  
she knew what that meant and was clever, hid and escaped and went underground, something she'd had ample practice at, had, in fact been doing her whole life; and the agents of Justicar Masako passed her by, sparing her. Passover. She'd closed her eyes and saw SS armbands, opened her eyes and saw jackbooted Archons. Horrors. Underwater, there are no tears. She is an expert, by now, at fleeing, eluding, concealing her identity. Surviving. Leaving yet another husband dead in her wake.   
  
 _Ukshartam l'ot al yadecha,  
v'hayu l'totafot bein einecha.  
Uchtavtam, al m'zuzot beite-cha, uvisharecha_  
  
The house was burned to the ground and as she ran out the back door just before dawn, she could smell singed flesh and burning hair, like  
  
 _\- nevermind that stop it stop it stop_  her brain shrieks at her as she sits bolt upright in the tub, sloshing water everywhere.

* * *

 

The scream dies in her throat. She finds herself dripping on the thick bathmat for a moment, palms pressed into the corners of her eyes, having moved so quickly, so reflexively, she hadn't even registered it. Slowly, from head to toe, she composes herself, taking in an unneccessary deep breath and slowly exhaling just for the feeling of it, then reaches towards one of the bath sheets, wraps herself in it. It is very near sunrise, she can feel it pulling her down, behind her eyes like a heavy dose of sedatives.  
  
This is not, technically, even a home, just a house. A bland, unremarkable apartment. Just a place where she sleeps during the day. And yet, this is always one of the places she returns, though it is cold, and empty, and she does not like to be alone, to sleep alone.   
  
Her past lovers ( _husbands, they were your husbands,_ she reminds herself) were, at least, fairly pleasant distractions. Thomas, kind, foolish Thomas, would comfort her with lovely visions when the nightmares came. Shannon would drown the silence out and push the memories back into their dark corners with drugs and sex. Gavin would engage her mind and delight her unto distraction. And twice, when that was not enough, she had gone so far as to turn two humans, make them her children. Silas first, then Oliver, both of them her boys, her beautiful boys. She raised them both as best she could, although first children are always a sort of experiment, a learning experience, for a mother, aren't they? So no wonder that Oliver turned out best. Still, she loves them both equally, mostly...though no doubt Oliver turned out to be far more useful. And devoted. That was the important part, really, the devotion. The _family_ she'd created for herself.  
  
She lets the towel drop to the ground, careless in her exhaustion. As she falls into her bed, the blackout curtains in those tiny windows keeping out the light, it is only then that she allows herself to relax, and to forget, as the sun rises and pulls her down into unconsciousness with its ascent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prayer in transliterated Hebrew is the V'ahavta, a part of the Shema, one of two prayers that are specifically commanded in Torah and one of the oldest prayers in Judaism. Observant Jews say this prayer twice a day, as it says in the text of the prayer, before they go to sleep at night and when they awaken.
> 
> "You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart,  
> with all your soul, and with all your might.  
> Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day.  
> Impress them upon your children.  
> Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away,  
> when you lie down and when you get up.  
> Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead;  
> inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
> 
> Thus you shall remember to observe all My commandments  
> and to be holy to your God.  
> I am Adonai, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God:  
> I am Adonai your God."


	3. climb in, taste the violence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a very competent (and very distractingly attractive) assassin is met, a fight and a frenzy occur, and our heroine still tries so desperately to feel again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy birthday to my very best friend. This chapter is my gift to you :)

She crooks her finger, beckons her childe to her. "We're going to go take down some Sabbat. I want you to come with me. It'll be like a bonding experience." She grins at Oliver, her childe. "Come along, now." Oliver, a foot taller than her, mirrors her grin with sharp white teeth exposed. He falls in step after her, obedient as ever.

* * *

Sheldon had come out to visit shortly after she'd returned to Chicago, and they'd spent a week together wandering the streets, showing him the sights as if he were a tourist, which, she figured, he was, in a way. All the while, she'd smiled at him indulgently, laughed at his jokes, and pretended, desperately, to return the feelings he had for her. The boy (for he was, to her, a boy - young, he'd been turned back in the 1970's, practically a baby as far as she was concerned, and so idealistic it was just this side of endearing) could not help wearing his heart on his sleeve, and she picked it up and ran with it. He curled long fingers around her hands as they walked, she ran her hands through his curly brown hair, teased him about the bowtie he wore as an affectation. She continued to feel like an actress in a play.

He'd left just this evening, so that she could go to Chicago's Court. Upon her return, she had immediately been placed as Primogen for her clan, the Brujah. Her reputation very much preceded her, and the current Prince was, she suspected, already a little afraid of her. He was a Tremere, a Warlock, a breed of vampires that were dirty and disgusting blood magic users. Katja was pleased to detect a tremble in his reedy voice when he appointed her to her station. As Primogen, she was the voice of her Clan and an advisor to the Prince, and also responsible for the other Brujah who both resided in the city and travelled through it. Generally, Primogen were the elders of the respective Clans in the city, but "elders" were often loosely interpreted. She was not, technically, an "elder", being at this juncture somewhere around seventy years a vampire, but she was well-respected amongst the Brujah and had been known to high-ranking members of vampire society for well over a decade now.   
  
She also was not very fond of the Tremere, and especially not of their magic. But, as Prince of the city, and in command of all the vampires residing within she was, unfortunately, required to obey him.

* * *

 

 

They'd set out to the South Side at the request of the Prince: her, Oliver, and two Assamites ( _they're apparently called Children of Haquim, now, must remember that...ha!_ ), and a ghoul that belonged to one of them, far more than adequate a boot squad to take out three lowly Sabbat members. Almost overkill, really, but one must never be too careful. Better to err on the side of caution. The Sabbat, the Rebellion, whatever you wanted to call them, they were just pure evil. Vampires that wanted to enslave humans and proclaim themselves the superior species, who lived to cause chaos, murder, and death. It was best, she'd learned, to stamp them out before they got too large of a foothold in areas where they'd cause serious damage to the city, and break the masquerade they all depended upon to conceal their nightly existence.

She'd never met the two Children of Haquim that the Prince had sent them out with. One was the Sheriff - the Prince's chosen enforcer for the domain of Chicago. Dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and bored-looking, he was the one behind the wheel of the car they'd been provided. The ghoul - a half-vampire, really, for all intents and purposes, who had been fed the blood of one of the vampires but had not yet been turned - was a bland-looking brunette girl who did not speak to them or look any of them directly in the eyes. In their society, that was just good manners, and smart survival instincts to boot. Ghouls were dependent upon vampiric blood, easily malleable, and often served as agents to whomever had been feeding them in the first place, doing whatever business needed to be taken care of during the day. Some vampires regarded them as servants or chattel, some treated theirs as children. This one seemed more the former than the latter. In a decade or three, she might be deemed privileged and learned enough to be turned by her regnant, as a gift for good service. Katja figured she belonged to the Sheriff.

The other vampire - well, he was curious. Most Children of Haquim that she'd ever met were vaguely Middle-Eastern in appearance. This one, though, was definitely not. He looked like he'd been turned young, olive-skinned, and tall, wearing a white shirt under a charcoal waistcoat and matching pants - clothing far too nice, she thought, for an excursion that would likely involve murder. His dark brown, curly hair was fashionably mussed in a way she thought probably took him 45 minutes to arrange. He looks as if he'd just walked off the pages of a GQ magazine. She hadn't gotten his name, and he hadn't bothered asking hers, just looked her up and down with his chocolate-brown eyes displaying a reserved sort of disdain, as if they were handicapping him by sending a woman with on this little excursion. Katja shot him a tight smile. _Just you wait_ , she thought.

It only takes them twenty minutes to find the address they'd been given by the Prince, a small nondescript warehouse in the middle of an industrial neighborhood, half the streetlights shot out, broken glass littering the gutters off crumbling curbs. She sharpens her senses, assesses the area. No one else around, the area was devoid of human life. Ordinarily, that'd be a bad sign, but she takes it as a blessing in this case - no one to get hurt, and no one to interfere. And also a sign, clear as day, that there was something very _wrong_ with this place. 

The four of them get out of the car, the ghoul remaining in her seat stock-still like a mannequin, and Katja nods her head towards the door and raises an eyebrow. The GQ model gives her a little smirk and rolls his eyes. When he levels his gaze at her, it suddenly strikes her that there's no sound. _Oh. Right. Assassins._ The Children of Haquim were, for hundreds of years, contract killers and spies who traded in the vitae of other vampires, widely mistrusted until recently, when some of them had decided to forgo their elders' practices and join the rest of civilized vampire society. One of their gifts was the simplest, and most effective tools in an assassin's arsenal: the ability to make small area around them completely silent. Nonetheless, Katja stupidly opens her mouth to speak. He shakes his head at her and then turns to sign something to the Sheriff, who emits a wordless laugh. She glares. She does not know any sign language and hates feeling stupid and left out.

There's virtually no security on the place. She figures either they just set up shop too recently to keep the place tight, or they were just stupid and inattentive, newly turned. The Sheriff breaks the door down with a single soundless kick using some applied vampiric strength, and they're in the door easy as pie. She can see, down the short corridor past the entryway, that the dumbasses are playing games on an Xbox on a projection screen at the rear of the empty warehouse. _New_ and _stupid and inattentive,_ she thinks. _Perfect_.

But as they enter, she sees  _them_  first and her world spins just a little bit. They have half a dozen humans, here, hanging on meathooks.  _Fucking meathooks_. And they are  _alive_. She has fought countless numbers of Sabbat in her lifetime, killed too many to count. But she has never actually seen firsthand what they do to humans. The GQ model keeps their entrance quiet, and as he, Oliver and the Sheriff begin their swift attack on the monsters ignorantly playing Arkham Asylum, she runs in the opposite direction, as fast as she can using the powers of her blood, in order to remove them from their torture. 

It only takes her a few seconds to retrieve them all before she turns to attend to the battle...which, she can see now, is nearly over.

There's only one of the Sabbat members left, and he's turned into what is surely his true form, a ravening monster with black, ichorous skin. It rushes towards the GQ model at tremendous speed, leaping impossibly high into the air intending, most likely, to tackle him to the ground. He's all the way across the warehouse, she knows there's no time, even with her formidable celerity, to get to the monster before the moment of impact. She starts to move, her heightened speed making everything seem, perversely, to move in slow motion. Katja watches as the GQ model calmly reaches into his waistcoat and reaches for something, and when he pulls it out, she sees that it's a wooden stake. His eyelashes flutter down for a half second to look at it, then up, assessing the target, and he raises his hand, flicks his wrist, and the stake goes flying into the air. She can hear her own laugh start, slowed down in her own ears, this is _impossible_.   
  
And against all odds, the monster drops to the ground, paralyzed, a full six feet from where the GQ model stands. Her jaw drops, and she reflexively skids to a halt halfway through her dash towards him. He turns his head slightly towards her, just enough to meet her eyes in the barest fraction of an acknowledgement, and she can see the corner of his mouth turn up in a smug little smirk. It was, without question, the absolute sexiest thing she has ever seen. _Goddamn_ , she thinks, astonished, as she looks at him, really _looks_ for the very first time.  _God_ damn. _I want that. I want_ that _, I want it, I want that._ He turns his attention back towards the monster on the ground, calmly withdrawing a short knife that had also been concealed on his person, and decapitates the monster in a swift stroke. She stares, hypnotized for a moment, as the creature turns into ash onto the floor.  
  
The GQ model turns to her, sketches a barely perceptible bow, and says in a gorgeously cultured London accent, "Emery Llyandryn. Pleasure to meet you, miss." He grins at her widely, his fangs showing.

* * *

 

 Shaking it off, Katja turns back to attend to the injured humans she'd managed to free. One is lying in a fetal position and crying weakly, the other is struggling to crawl away. Heartbreaking. Their blood pools on the ground, deliciously, reminding her of...   
  
 _the crack of a lash, their laughter. Cigar smoke thick in the air. She screams..._    
  
Their bodies are battered, their flesh pale from blood loss.   
  
 _She begs, plads until her throat is raw. Please please please. I'll do whatever you want. She can smell her own blood, sweat, and fear._    
  
And then, suddenly, as she is lost in the memories surfacing unwillingly in her brain, a young woman appears, and cracks the humans both one after the other over the head, knocking them unconscious.

Quick as a whip, Katja goes for her throat. The ghoul ducks just as Emery steps in front of Katja, grabbing at her arms to hold her off. "Wait, wait, wait..." he says, but she is screaming over his shoulder at the ghoul a wordless shriek of pure rage. She can feel the beast rising in her, begging her to let it out. She is overwhelmed with the desire to rip that stupid girl open head to toe, to sink her fangs into her and tear her throat out with her teeth. The Sheriff grabs the ghoul by the arm and, in a single motion, withers it with a touch. The ghoul whimpers, sinking to the ground, clutching her suddenly dessicated arm. "You did  _not_  have permission to do that. That's for acting without it. Remember it well." As he does this, even so, she wants to break the girl's other arm...but she manages to push that urge down through sheer force of will. Barely.

"Mom, maybe you should call an ambulance," Oliver says quietly, looking her in the eye. 

"Right. Right. Right. Yes. Okay. Let me. Thank you. Darling." Shaking with barely restrained anger still, she punches a button on her phone. Moments later, a private ambulance arrives and hustles the badly wounded humans off, no questions asked. She watches them go.

"Let's go back and report to the Prince now," Oliver says, and takes her by the arm, leads her back to the car.

* * *

 

She is still barely controlling herself when they arrive back at the art gallery where the Prince is holding court. "I should tell him...that I'm all right", she says to Oliver, who nods, and she sends a rather garbled text message to Sheldon in her haste. 

Moments later, her phone rings. "You don't sound all right. Are you...all right?" She feels like she should weep, like that would be the appropriate emotion here. But she can't. Instead, she tells him all of what happened, doing her best to sound both shaky and relieved. "It...brought it all back. You know? And I don't like...thinking about that." This, at least, is the truth.

"I know," he soothes, though in truth, he does not know, would have no way of knowing. "In fact, I'm coming to see you tomorrow. There's no way I can get there before sunrise, not tonight. But tomorrow. I'll be back in Chicago."

She bites her lip. She was not prepared for this. "Tomorrow. Okay. Yes. I would...love that," and she hopes he cannot hear the half-second of hesitation in her voice.

"You know I love you." His voice is warm, kind, and she has no doubt that he is sincere.

"I love you too," she says, aware that she is not certain that she actually means it, but that it is the appropriate response in this situation. "Goodnight, darling." She tries not to think of Emery's sly grin, his fangs brushing his bottom lip.

* * *

 

Oliver pulls her aside and speaks to her quietly. "They won't remember us. I wiped that out of their heads. But they will remember being tortured." Some vampires have the ability to manipulate the memories of others. She does, but she rarely uses it. It could be used on vampires, with differing degress of success. It was easiest to use it on humans, they were far more malleable, mentally. Oliver had always been better at it than she was. 

"I...don't think they should...remember that. Being tortured. It will be easier for them...to forget. They should never know what has happened to them. They should never,  _ever_  know. It is too much of a burden for anyone to bear." She says this quietly, looks up at Oliver. Her gaze is bottomless, commanding.

"You should wipe their memories, darling. It will be a mercy to them. A blessing. Sometimes forgetting...is a blessing." Oliver regards her for a moment, and then nods and walks away, to find those poor tortured souls and give them, at least, a manufactured sort of peace. 


	4. an angel's face is tricky to wear constantly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a promotion, and a continued distraction.

As Sheldon slides into the passenger seat, she is quiet for a moment. **  
**

"Thank you for coming back. You really shouldn't have...but I must admit I am glad that you did." She feels oddly formal, and a little embarrassed, as if she must apologize. "I don't know what came over me, I didn't mean to frighten you."

"Nothing to be sorry about", he grins. "I'm always happy to see you again, Kat." Just hearing her nickname on his lips, affectionate and warm, makes her feel a pang of guilt. She stiffens for a second, looks away.

She laces her right hand with his left as they pull out onto the highway. As she does, she can feel something in her spine relaxing. Comfort. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him smiling, and she is further endeared.  _He is so incredibly sweet_.

* * *

Even in the heart of the city, you can actually see some stars. They'd climbed up to the roof of her building, where there was a little rooftop garden she'd recently discovered. She rests her head in his lap, as he idly runs his fingers through her hair. She has a faraway look in her eyes. Finally, she breaks the silence.

"It was awful. What they were doing to them. I couldn't...I have never seen anything like it before." Her jaw clenches a little with the recollection, those humans up on meathooks, their eyes glazed and dull with pain. She realizes that what she has just said is a lie, but continues talking, to cover it up. "And so, I was...really unnerved. But I didn't want you to worry. You did, though. And you called me. And you came." She is marveling at these words, looking up at him. 

"Of course I did. I love you", he says simply, and he smiles down at her kindly, and as he does she feels...nothing.

She knows that she is supposed to say it in return. She returns the smile, mirroring him. "I love you too, Shelly."

He looks up at the stars, humming happily, and she catches herself staring at Sheldon, the long line of his throat exposed before her.  _His trust is utterly disarming. Different._ She thinks about how young he is, how very dedicated he was to doing good, to _being_ good, to fighting for the underdog and standing up for the weak. It followed, then, that of course he'd be enamored with her. He saw her as someone to save, and she saw him as someone with whom she could be safe with. A safe choice, all around.  
  
 _He seems so innocent. What if he knew?_ She bites her lip.  _If he knew, he would hate me forever._    
  
Katja knows that he will never ask her about her past. That's why she likes him.    
  
She reaches for his free hand and twines it in hers. 

* * *

  
_"I control you now", Shannon says with his smug, sexy little smile._   
  
_She nods her head, slowly._   
  
_"I mean it. Do you know what I could do to you with this?" he asked. She just stares at him, sullen. From out of the pocket of his coat, he produces a toothpick in his right hand, and, before she can understand what he is doing, stabs it into the object in the shiny silver box._   
  
_Instantly, she is rendered immobile, frozen. After a torturous minute or two, he withdraws it, with a smug grin, and she can move again. Unnerved, she glares at him, but does not speak. He had taught her to hold her tongue, speak when spoken to._   
  
_"I control you now. Don't you ever think of betraying me", he says quietly, his words smooth and soft as silk. He doesn't need to raise his voice to threaten her. He can do it in a whisper. "Ever. Understand?" He puts one graceful finger under her chin, makes her look up and at his face, into his terrible green eyes._   
  
_"Don't worry, I'll keep this safe. After all, we can't have girls going around giving their hearts to just anyone, now, can we?" His smile is cruel, mocking. He caresses her cheek gently._   
  
_"I understand", she whispers, and bows her head. And she does._   
  
_Abruptly, he grabs her by the hair, forces her to her knees in front of him on the cold cement floor._   
  
_"Now...show me how grateful you are."_

* * *

"I should have died so many times", she murmurs to herself under her breath. At the vanity, she finishes her makeup, puts in her earrings, stands up and straightens her skirt. Looks herself over in the full-length mirror critically...but, no, perfect. Over her shoulder, she calls, "Darling, are you almost ready? Let's get out of here, hmmm? We'll be late."

She sashays out to the master suite and over to Sheldon, and, standing on her tiptoes, throws her arms around his neck, holding him to her, kissing him sweetly. After a long moment, she steps back, and straightens his bowtie with a naughty smile. "Maybe I'll be wearing that later." She laughs at this, throws him a wink.   
  
"Come on. We've a drive ahead of us." She has to drop him back at the airport before she heads to Court, so he can get back to St. Augustine. She is not sure if she is relieved or regretful that he could not stay with her longer, this time.

* * *

  
 _You want to know how much he loved you?" Thomas had spat. "How much he loved you? He sold you to me. That's how much he cared." He throws a sheaf of correspondence down at her feet.  
  
"It took me six days of negotiations to save you from that fucking snake, and this is how you treat me?" He is hurt, she knows, but she sets that aside for now. If she'd still had her heart, she'd think it was breaking. Sold? Shannon had sold her? Like she was property. A coldness settles in her chest. She picks up the papers, and there it is in black and white. The price, the details, the contract.  
  
"Kat, he never loved you. You were nothing to him except a plaything. And he was bored of you. But you're everything to me. I love you. I _ saved _you", he whines plaintively._  
  
 _"Why should I believe you, trickster? You and your fucking illusions. I don't believe you. I can't. He would never have..." She wishes she were dead. "How do I know this isn't another trick?" She feels strangely indifferent. Vindictive._  
  
 _"It's not, Kat, I swear I would never lie to you. I only want to help you." He is earnest in his convictions. She despises him for it, for his weakness, for his attempt to be some kind of white knight here, thinking she is some kind of corrupted princess in a tower. "Stay with me. Please. I will love you, I will protect you, I swear it on my life." He is pleading, desperate to convince her, to make her love him. But she couldn't, even if she wanted to._  
  
 _"Did he give you my heart?"_

* * *

 "Come, now, talk to me. Tell me what's been happening around here." She walks purposefully toward a corner booth, Oliver following obediently at her heels. After she slides in, Oliver settles his lanky self down next to her and opens his mouth to speak, to fill her in on the local gossip she'd been missing in her absence.

  
He barely gets out a syllable before the Prince of Chicago, Gabriel Sfara of House and Clan Tremere himself steps out of the shadows towards the both of them. He nods in her direction, ignoring Oliver completely, and she restrains herself from rolling her eyes at his deliberately dramatic entrance. His hands are clasped before him in his usual stiff manner, his dark hair rolling in waves down past his shoulders. "Katja."  
  
"Prince Sfara...?" She inclines her head politely at the Warlock, her manners a matter of kneejerk reflex. She hates herself for doing it even as she forms a polite, interested smile on her lips.  
  
Not one for polite small talk, the Prince gets right to it. "I would like you to assume the position of Sheriff of Chicago. Our former Sheriff has been called away from the city indefinitely to assist Archon Geist and the Justicariate."  
  
 _Shit. Shit. Shit._ Her mind races. _"Called away indefinitely", my lily-white ass._  The former Sheriff of Chicago probably got caught doing dirty, she figures, and at any rate, being remanded into the custody of Archons and their Justicars was unlikely to result in a long, happy unlife. Archons were kind of like the US Marshals of civilized vampire society, and the Justicars they served...well, the elders of any vampire Clan were generally scary as hell. There were seven of them. Once, and only once, she had been in a room with all seven, chosen as an ambassador for the Brujah at a Conclave. That one had been called as a sort of legislation session, and she'd been there purely as a messenger, but even so, it had been a nervewracking experience.  She counted herself exceptionally lucky that she'd been able to dance out of there with her head on her shoulders. It was an experience she never wished to repeat as long as she lived.  
  
"Oh, my, this is really so  _sudden_ , I just don't know what to  _say_..." she prattles, leaning forward with mock flirtatiousness, stalling for time.  _Fuuuuuck. That wasn't a question, it was a statement. Fuck my life. I haven't even been here for half an hour._  
  
"Say yes, mom." Oliver interrupts cheerfully.  
  
"Uh...sure, I guess," she smiles blankly. It hadn't been a request anyways, not really. Being the Sheriff of such a large city was not without its perks - as the Prince's primary enforcer for the Domain of Chicago, she gained a significant amount of respect and fear. It signaled a rise in prominence, put her name out there again. On the other hand, of course, it would also put her directly in harm's way on a regular basis, depending on how often its residents chose to get themselves in trouble with the Prince or other vampires.  
  
"Thank you. I'll announce it at court tonight." Sfara nods at them again, and glides away from the both of them. She stares after him for a few seconds, blinking.  
  
 _Damn it._  
  
She looks at Oliver, shrugs as if she doesn't much care. "Well, then, I guess I'm Sheriff now."  
  
"It's not like there's anyone else here who could do the job, other than you", Oliver shrugs, glancing around the room pointedly. She has to admit he has a valid point. She is, after all, the only Brujah in the city save for him, and he was practically a _child_ still.  
  
"True. The rest of the inhabitants of Chicago these days are by and large either young, weak, or," she notes with distaste at the Malkavian crying in the corner about...something, who knows what, "...unstable." Malkavians were touched with madness, all of them. Most of them were annoying but harmless, for the most part. Some were downright scary, their madness taking the form of visions and cryptic prophecies. They unnerved her, and she'd not cared for too many of them through the years.   
  
She pauses, mulling it over for a moment. "I suppose I should tell him the news."  _And Sheldon probably won't be best pleased, with how he worries_ , she thinks, amused. He seemed to enjoy fretting over her, as if she weren't one of the deadliest creatures on Earth. She takes out her ever-present cell phone, opens it, and begins to send a message.

Just before she presses "send", she glances up and sees Emery entering the room, a small knowing smile on his lips as he approaches. She grabs her phone off the table and drops it into her purse, never once breaking eye contact, watching him take off his peacoat as he walks towards the booth. When he arrives, he slides into the seat next to her, presumptuously close. "Miss," he says, nodding deferentially at her. "I hear there's congratulations in order."  
  
Oliver mock-narrows his eyes at her. "Did you get married again, mom?"  
  
One dark eyebrow raises. "Married, miss?" Emery blinks at her in surprise. His eyelashes are so gorgeously thick and dark. _Damn him_.  
  
"Uh", she says. "Not-"  
  
Oliver cuts her off. "Oh, you're not, this time? With Sheldon? D'you know she's had four husbands?" She shoots him a warning glance, and Oliver grins, a bit nervously, and bless him, shuts up.  
  
"I've been made Sheriff of the domain," she informs Emery coolly, trying not to watch him lick his lips, the barest hint of a fang visible when they part slightly.  
  
He catches her staring and, looking amused, licks his lips again, slowly and deliberately. "So I'd heard. Word travels fast." His voice is a low purr, his London accent making it far sexier than it has any right to be. She's glad her heart is missing because otherwise it'd be on the floor underneath the table. _Jesus_.  
  
"I...have to go," she hears Oliver say to no one in particular, and exits the booth.  
  
Emery leans in closer towards her, sketches her a mock genuflection. "Well. Should you need any assistance, I'm at your service, miss."   
 


	5. pretty deadly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our heroine goes out hunting, performs the functions of her newfound duties as Sheriff, and continues to feel uncertain about her unlife decisions.
> 
> There's some light BDSM as well.

She finishes touching up her lipstick in the mirror before she gets dressed.

 _What to wear, what to wear...?_  She rummages through her closet before taking out a pair of baggy black jeans that sit low on her waist, and a tight red lace long-line tank top that Marisol had purchased for her.  _Short sleeves...gonna have to cover that tattoo up, then._  She could always use the powers of the blood to conceal it, along with the scars on her back, just so she could wear a midriff top, but it just doesn't seem important enough tonight. Plus, concentrating to conceal her appearance in such a fashion all night doesn't much appeal to her. Katja wriggles on the jeans, pulls the top on. Checks herself in the mirror.

The girl looking back at her is far, far younger than she feels. Her shoulder-length flame-red hair has been styled with an artfully rumpled "just-rolled-out-of-bed" look, her makeup has been done to play up the green in her eyes and to tone down the brown, to good effect. The low-cut shirt emphasizes her narrow waist, plays up her breasts. She applies a careful layer of theater-grade makeup, specially made to conceal such things, over the six numbers on her left forearm before she leaves the vanity.

As a finishing touch, she slips some three-inch-high platform boots on to complete to the ensemble, bumping her height up to a mere 5'3". She stuffs a couple of twenties in her pocket, along with a fake ID that says "Katelyn Pleasant", and heads out the door.

* * *

  
At the club she flashes her ID with a smile and the bouncer lets her in, no cover. It is dark and loud inside, and, since Chicago passed the smoking ban, she can now smell the spilled, stale beer, cheap cologne, perfume, and body odor that the cigarette smoke had been masking all along. If this scent is bothering anyone else, it's hard to tell. The club is jumpin', thick with intoxicated young men and women, moving with the beat. 

She worms her way up through the crowd to the DJ booth. "Hey, Valentine", she purrs to the massive black man sitting in front of a bunch of equipment, "I'm gonna need a back booth in VIP."

"Well, hell, it's good to see you too. I'm doing fine. Thank you for asking", he says with a sardonic smile.

"Sugar, you know I love you. Just get me the booth, please?" He sighs in feigned exasperation, and she takes that as an affirmative. "Thanks, baby, you're the best. Oh, and also, it's my 21st birthday today." She gives him a grin and a wink.

He laughs, a deep genuine belly laugh. "Again? Girl, how many times you gonna turn 21?"

She raises an eyebrow. "Oh, as many as it takes. Really, I just love the free drinks and all the attention."

Still laughing, he turns to the mic. "HEY EVERYONE! JUST WANTED TO LET Y'ALL KNOW...KATELYN IS TURNING 21 TODAY! HEAD ON UP TO THE BACK BAR AND SHOW HER SOME LOOOOOOVE!"

"Thanks, Val." She turns, exits the DJ booth, and perches on the edge of the bar just a few steps outside, trying to look half-drunk and excited and sweet. 

It doesn't take much time before one of them approaches her. "So, are you the one who's 21 today?" a faux-blonde kid who looks like he just stepped out of the Hollister catalogue slurs at her over the music. He is holding a Heineken that's only about a third full. "Let me get you a drink."  _Oh, you'll be giving me a drink all right_ , she thinks, and smiles up at him with a giggle. 

"Sure! My friends are up in VIP. You wanna come hang with us? You're pretty cute." 

"Wow, seriously? VIP? Oh, yeah. Hell yeah." He looks both buzzed and impressed. She takes him by the hand. 

"Right this way."

* * *

  
The booth, of course, is empty. She pretends she is shocked to see it that way. "Oh damn! Where the hell did they go? You know, I just bet they're on the dance floor? Melissa _loooooves_ Lady Gaga." She lets a pouty frown cross her face before she lets him see a sly grin replace it. "I think I know what we can do while we're waiting."

Katja pulls him down next to her in the booth and closes the curtains with the other hand. He lands rather gracelessly with a thud onto the seat next to her, curling in towards her and dipping his head to kiss her. She allows him, momentarily, this brief privilege, before pushing him back gently into the seat and twisting herself to straddle him. He looks up at her, wonderstruck, eyes glazed from alcohol.

She smiles at him, pinning him still with her gaze, and then bends to his neck, her fangs extending as she scents his blood beneath the skin. As she begins to drink from him, she stifles a laugh as he moans.  _That was too fucking easy._  
  
The blood she drinks from him isn't enough to do any real damage, and she makes sure he'll walk out of here lightheaded thinking he just had a quick fuck up in the VIP with a cute 21-year-old eager for some birthday sex. This is usually her preferred tactic for feeding - she has a couple clubs and bars in her rotation, a few people in her service, a few routines she goes through.  
  
In this particular club, she pretends, once every few weeks or so, to be a 21-year-old for "free drinks", which, while not entirely a lie, is not exactly true either. In others she might be a lonely young widow; in yet another, a sorority sister out for a good time. There's almost always the promise of sex, there's always some flirtation and seduction. She's not brutal about it, she gets what she wants without force, and, if she needs it, the powers of her vampiric nature are always more than enough to ensure that they're drawn to her every time.  
  
She prefers not to use them, if she can help it. Challenges are fun. Keeps her nights interesting.

* * *

"But I don't even know who you _are_ ", the sniveling Tremere that she is interrogating whines.

"You don't know who _I_ am." She pauses, raises an eyebrow, exaggerates disbelief. "I am the Sheriff of this city. I am  _extremely_  highly respected in vampire society. I have lived in this city for decades and fought to defend it so many times I've lost count. I have practically every Archon in the Midwest and then some on motherfucking speed-dial, I fought alongside former Brujah Justicar Masako during the eradication of the enormous Sabbat pack known as House Malice in Chicago, as well as against countless enemies to our safety, just to name a few things, and  _you don't know who the fuck I am_? Consider this your opportunity to get your education."

"Also, allegedly, her breasts have their own status", Archon Francis Merevein adds drily.

She doesn't let the sexist remark break her composure, and instead continues staring down his clanmate. "Yes. He's right. That's not pertinent to the current situation, but, yes." Her tone is dry, irritated. The Archon had come to watch her work, to ensure that his clanmate was "treated fairly". She would not let herself be rattled by the Warlock's presence, by either of the blood magic users in the room. At the end of the night, she was the one who was acting within her jurisdiction here, not him. Katja outranked Francis here, in this city and in this room, while she was on the job, and she knew it. Didn't mean the good Archon wouldn't try to use his own position as leverage, try to intimidate her or shake her out of doing her job properly. 

His clanmate stood accused of consuming the soul of another vampire, an act known as diablerie. It was one of the highest and most repellent crimes in their society. It was one thing to murder someone - vampires casually murdered one another on a fairly regular basis, to be sure - but another thing entirely to destroy their very essence. It was frighteningly easy to do. If drinking human blood was like sex, vampire blood was like the best, most mindblowing orgasm attainable. It was delicious and, once tasted, difficult to stop drinking without a serious effort of will. The older the vampire, the better the blood; the better the blood, the harder to stop. If a vampire didn't stop, and drained another vampire dry, and kept drinking, then they would consume the other's very soul and, in doing so, might become much, much stronger. But at a cost.   
  
It didn't work every time. Sometimes the consumption of another's soul was enough to fracture the vampire's mind, leave them broken, hallucinating, or mad. Sometimes they would adopt personality traits or the vampiric powers of the one they'd eaten, a sort of conspicuous consumpton. And sometimes it did nothing at all but to taint them. The Sabbat were, of course, fond of this practice and did it often. Civilized vampires found it heinous, or at least, claimed to. But even so, they still did it, too, despite all proscriptions otherwise.   
  
Like this guy, for example.

Katja narrows her eyes and looks at him, really _looks_ , and there it is, plain as day. Diablerists always bore their taint in their aura, turned it black. Not everyone could see this, but some vampires had a talent for it. She was one of them. The Tremere's was pitch-black, tarry...which meant it was recent. After a period of time, it'd gradually fade out as the consumed soul was "digested" by the consuming vampire, until it was gone completely. Where it went, of course, was a matter of spiritual debate, but that was not her wheelhouse in any event.  
  
Turning her gaze on Francis, she smiles coldly. "You can leave. I've got all I need. Tell Prince Sforza that his justice will be enacted in short order." The cowering vampire behind her emits a short shriek, but it's cut off when she blurs over to pin him with all her strength to the wall, knocking the air out of his lungs. "Go", she says to Francis, not looking at him. There's a pause, and then she hears the door click open and shut.  
  
She exits the room a few minutes later, making a show of brushing the bits of fine ash off of her shirt. "Someone clean that up", she commands briskly to a ghoul standing in the hall, waving behind her at the now-empty room.

 

* * *

 

Katja drops the facade the minute she walks in the door.

Shutting it slowly, she presses her back to it for a minute and closes her eyes, exhausted. Then, she begins securing the locks with her right hand, unbuckling her five-inch heels with her left, her leg pulled up behind her in some kind of feminine gymnastic feat. There is a dull headache pounding behind her eyes, though it's more tension than anything else. It's dark, and cool, and quiet there, in the apartment. And empty.  _It's always empty._  

In truth, she was grateful that the wayward Tremere's execution hadn't been a public one. She wasn't a fan of that, even if it was fully justified. Some Princes might feel it served as a deterrent, or struck fear and awe into the hearts of their citizenry, but she had never seen a Prince who ruled that way last very long. She kicks the shoes off, stepping down to her natural height, and arches her back in a stretch before heading into the master suite. It figures that he wouldn't have done such a thing anyways: the offending party had been a clanmate of the Prince, and she'd been instructed to keep his crime and his execution as private as was possible. As far as she was concerned, it illustrated perfectly the problematic nature of the Tremere, whom she felt could stand a bit of public embarrassment on a regular basis.

 

Moving through her haven towards towards the bedroom suite, she doesn't bother turning any of the lights on. She has long been able to sense her way through the dark.

* * *

  
_"Dress to impress, darling. I don't care what clan you are. If you're working for me, you must always show yourself off. Make them stare." Shannon Cross tosses a short black vinyl dress in her direction. At least, she thinks it's black. The room is so dimly lit it's hard to see._

_She catches it, but looks at him skeptically. She doesn't speak. Her English still isn't great, and she's far better at listening than talking. She gets the impression he likes this about her._

_"Next time we go to the Prince's court, take a look around you. You're dealing with mostly men. We're admittedly...easily distracted." He comes up from behind, wraps his arms around her. She can feel his hardness pressing into her at the small of her back. "And we're more likely to be influenced by you, if we like what we're looking at", he hisses in her ear. It makes her whole body tingle. Despite herself, she is both enthralled and terrified. She freezes in place, standing very still, knowing this snake could bite._

_"Dress to intimidate. Dress to seduce. Appearance of power is power." He runs his hands down her body. "Now. Strip." He holds her by the shoulders and spins her around to face him. She looks up, blinks at him. He makes an impatient gesture with his elegant hands. "Go on. Do it."_

_She looks at the floor, and hesitates for only a moment before pulling off her thin long-sleeved top._

_"You could at least_ try _to be sexy about it", Shannon sneers. She bites her lip, chastened, and wriggles out of her jeans in what she hopes is a vaguely pleasing manner. She pauses, looks up at him. "What are you waiting for?" he murmurs. "Keep going." She unhooks her bra with a single hand, shrugs it off with a roll of her shoulders, and drops it to the ground._

_"Now, put these on." He hands her a ridiculous pair of six inch heels, shiny black PVC to, she assumes, match the dress._

_She can barely see his face through the dimly lit darkness. "The lights..." she whispers. At first she wants him to turn them on, then she changes her mind. She doesn't want him to see her scars. Obediently, she pulls the shoes on, fumbling a bit in the poorly lit room._

_"No lights." Now his voice is behind her, again. He pulls something around her neck in a quick flash of movement, startling her. Her hands fly up to her throat as he deftly fastens the buckle closed. It's some kind of a collar, like one would put on a dog. The collar has one large ring in the front, with two smaller rings attached. He presses himself up against her again, very clearly aroused, and cups her breasts with his hands._

_He secures one hand, then the other, her wrists contained in braces tethered to the rings. The gesture is, of course, purely symbolic - they both know that, were she of a mind to, she could snap those restraints as easy as breathing, and tear his head off before he even knew it._

_She does not know why she finds this bondage so comforting, but something in the back of her head tells her that it's familiar, before she pushes the thought down, away from her consciousness, ignoring it. He uses her as he wants to, whenever the mood strikes him. Sometimes, he brings someone else in, and just stands there and watches, while some stranger makes her scream, makes her back arch and her body shudder, staring, unreadable, with his cold eyes. He likes to watch, and this, too, she tells herself she does not much mind._

_The other Setites don't think much of his pet. They feel it's the equivalent of having a well-trained pit bull tethered in the yard. But he has trained her as a sort of courtesan; charming, friendly, seductive, forward. She often sits at his feet. Sometimes he strokes her hair, idly, as he talks to others, does business, makes deals. When it occurs to her, she is amused that she enjoys such small attention from his hands. She is occasionally, quietly thrilled on the occasions that he enters her room late at night, just before morning, slips into her bed, and slips into her, before the sun rises and compels them to sleep._

_Katja can feel the curve of his smile on her collarbone as he kisses up toward her neck. He pushes her, roughly, down onto his bed, winds his way over her body. At this, she throws all caution aside, as she is overwhelmed with a surge of pure, helpless lust. "Mmmm. We'll worry about dressing you later," he murmurs against her skin and she laughs._

 

* * *

  
She sits on the edge of her bed and picks up her cell phone, stares at it for a minute, debating over whether or not to call Sheldon. What could she say?  _"Darling, I had a lovely time at the Prince's court, got to kill someone tonight, his ashes are still in my hair?"_   She taps the phone on, stares at the glowing screen for a moment, taps it off. In a strange way, she does miss the sound of his voice, the way he holds her, always so gentle, as if he could ever possibly hurt her with his embrace. It is a thing that she finds both endearing and irritating in turns. She does not need to be coddled and treated delicately, not all the time. And especially not tonight, when she'd executed a criminal.

Peeing off her clothes, she heads for the shower. Katja stands under the hot water for a long while, letting it warm her skin, letting her thoughts wander as she washes the last bits of Tremere ash out of her hair, humming a little. When she's done, she steps out of the shower and towels off, trying not to think of Emery's hungry, sharp-edged smile when she had announced that a criminal had been dispatched by her hands.

As she slips between the sheets, still nude, the king-size bed feels vast and lonely, and she cannot help but feel a slight pang of melancholy. She checks her phone, half-hoping there might be a message. But no, there's nothing. She decides to leave it be, shuts off the light, and, in the dark, under the hum of the ceiling fan, tries to relax.


	6. it took all the might in me

Katja takes a slow drag off of her cigarette, exhaling the smoke thoughtfully. **  
**

It is dark, as always, in her haven, and she is alone. They would laugh, if they saw her here, someone so incredibly over-companioned shutting everyone else away. But the truth is that she gets socially exhausted, having to go out and play a part every night, her cheeks sore from smiling, her muscles tense from hypervigilance, her head buzzing with chatter, a dull roar behind her temples.

She inhales the smoke, looks out over the city. Tapping her ashes, absently, into a china saucer she has set nearby, she contemplates the events of the past few months. Being Sheriff of Chicago was an exhausting job, even for someone with inexhaustable supernatural strength and stamina. The position was one of the more dangerous ones, usually reserved for one of two types of people: someone the Prince felt was an efficient, competent killing machine, or someone he wanted to see dead in short order. These nights, he'd been showing up to his own court less and less, once every couple of months, letting the city run itself. That, too, was a move made by one of two types of vampires: ones who were overconfident over their own prowess, or ones that were incredibly incompetent.

It was looking, more and more, like it might be an overestimation of the former as a result of the latter in Prince Sforza's case.

Really, it hadn't been difficult, getting back on her feet amongst her own kind. It wasn't unusual for vampires to periodically retreat for a time, whether it was to take a long, torporous sleep, or to just say "fuck it" and do their own thing for awhile. Interacting with others was, the way she figured it, probably the best way to maintain the vestiges of humanity. The longer one of their kind stayed solitary, the easier it became to turn into a monster. And that wasn't something she particularly wanted, given that monsters always got hunted down in the end. They broke the masquerade  
  
Associating with other vampires had its own particular set of dangers that went along with it. There was a fine balance between being loved and feared by others that was particularly key to her. The trick was, she felt, to keep herself surrounded at all times by a bevy of other, powerful men that would answer to her beck and call to perform lesser tasks. It was a position that had never failed her over the years. Be sweet, be kind, be friendly. Make it look like if you have to get your own hands dirty, it was in order to bring a pain so profound as to render the direct invocation of your name _terrifying_. However, the downside to that was that for every friend you cultivated, you made yourself an enemy, for various and sundry reasons ranging from legitimate to excruciatingly petty. Other vampires coveted her position, her power, her easy grace amongst them that they felt they lacked, the fact that she was a woman, hell, even her fabulous high-heeled shoes.

Enemies surrounded her as much as friends, for no reason, and for _every_ reason. It has become clear, after re-entering vampire society, that her intuition was correct: never be seen in public with someone that you love. That was the key, the thing she'd been missing all this time. She'll keep Sheldon her little secret, for now. Quiet, hidden away. And safe. If she doesn't mention him, doesn't openly miss him, if she distracts everyone away, makes them think she's interested elsewhere, they will leave him alone. He will not be a target.  _Cannot_  be a target. She would never forgive herself. 

 

So, let them think what they will, let them see her as some kind of empty-headed flirt, with her army of attractive gentlemen around her at all times. 

Whatever it takes.

 

* * *

  
_Auschwitz is where she had first learned to hide. First from the cruel eyes of the officers, then from the lust of her tormentors, then from the jealous eyes of the other inmates. It is where she learned to hate the cold. It is always cold, so cold, and of course she, like everyone else, is without proper clothing to keep her warm. Even the few luxuries she was allowed for her...services...couldn't keep her out of the bitter chill._

_The camp was in a frenzy, SS men screaming orders, everyone was being lined up to evacuate the hell on earth that had become their day to day existence. There was gunfire, but the gunfire really had lost all its meaning. She was numb to it. Instead, in the rush, she slipped away, heart pounding wildly in her chest, to hide amongst the pile of dead._

_The corpses kept her warm._

 

* * *

  
She returns to the living room, flops down on the couch, turns on the television and idly starts flipping channels. Her phone buzzes with a message, and she glances at the sender. It's not Sheldon, as she'd hoped, or Emery, as she'd secretly been hoping.   
  
 _they're all fucking idiots._

Her lips twist into a wry grin. Jack Sebastien, Archon to the Ventrue Justicar, a clanmate and, she supposes, a friend, after a fashion. He was, she presumed, in some Prince's court on the West Coast somewhere, accounting for the time difference. They'd met a small handful of times over the years, and occasionally he'd send her an email or a text about some thing or another going on in vampire society. He once told her he hated her less than the other Brujah. It was his form of high praise. _Same_ , she'd replied, knowing he'd get her deadpan tone even through text, and there was no return message that time. A mutual acknowledgement.  
  
He'd once been Prince of San Francisco, a decade or so back. He'd disappeared for a time, presumed dead. Jack had been Conclaved, and they'd stripped him of his position as Prince. She doesn't remember why, exactly. Something about territory, something to do with the Kuei-Jin, some weird subset of Asian vampires prevalent on the West Coast. She hadn't been paying much attention, honestly. He had reemerged as an Archon half a year later. Lucinde, the Ventrue Justicar, had put him in her service. She hadn't exactly been as surprised as some of the other Brujah were. Privately, she was pleased to see him alive again. They weren't exactly close, by any means - he lived 2000 miles away, after all, it wasn't like she ran into him often - but they'd kept in contact off and on, mostly business, exchanging information and gossip from time to time. It was his job, after all, to keep an ear to the ground about the happenings in North America, and for her part, she figured she was just a useful contact to have in her phone should he need it. And vice-versa.

When she looks back up at the screen, she notices she'd stopped on a documentary. Black and white footage of those familiar buildings, the gate, the faces...and when she closes her eyes to shield herself from the images, she sees the blood and brain spattered across the ground from the gunshot wound, the ashes raining down, even the smell comes back to her - oh, indescribable, the smell of human waste, rotting decomposition and burning hair and flesh - and she clutches her left arm, the long sleeves of her shirt hiding the tattoo, and she remembers:

* * *

  
_how they had caught her, in amongst the bodies, after a few days, and she is forced to march with the rest. She is hungry, exhausted, and freezing cold: it seems the chill will never end, it cuts to the very core of her. She promises herself that should she ever get out of this - an idea that is ludicrously fantastic, as she walks, fueled on pure will and nothing else - that she will never ever let herself grow cold again._

_They have forced them to march for two days straight with no food, water, or relief of any kind. With each step a defiance builds in her, a kind of rage that burns in her chest. She has reached her limit, has finally endured enough. She plans her escape as she walks._ At least _, she thinks,_ if I fail, I will be dead. And either way, I will be relieved. _The idea fills her with a kind of savage glee. Maybe, at least, she can hurt a few of the camp guards on her way out. A small consolation for all she's endured here. She makes herself focus, formulates a plausible dash for freedom._

_Two more miles pass, and she is ready. She pretends to fall, weak with hunger and exhaustion, as she has seen so many of her people do already. As she expected, the nearest SS officer, marching two rows back, rushes on her, gun drawn, shouting and swearing at her in German. As he approaches, she manages to time it just right to grab and turn his pistol around on him, breaking his wrist in the process. Even weak like this, half-frozen and starved, she's still quick, her reflexes good as ever. She fires it at his head, and doesn't wait to see what happens next as she runs like all Hell is on her heels into the woods, away from the commotion and gunfire behind her._

* * *

  
The thing about having her heart removed from her, stolen out of her body by Shannon Cross, is a lot of her feelings went with it. It's not that she didn't have any. It's just that they were dulled. Watching the images on the screen before her, she wants to cry, in that quiet room, for her daughter, her son, her husband, for everyone lost forever to her, but she can't quite bring herself to do it. She had gotten away, had survived; the guilt of this returning to her as always it did when she was forced to confront it. Really, she feels more guilt over _not_ feeling than anything else. 

When she is finished, and calm once more, she picks up the phone, hoping there will be a voice on the other end of the line, distracting her, making her forget it all again.

"Emery?"

 

* * *

 

"Your Grace?" says the polite British voice on the other end of the line. 

"Hey. What are you up to tonight? I need to do something, anything to get me out of the house for a little while tonight." She says this calmly, or, at least, mostly so.  
  
There is a pause. "Well....you could come over and help train my sons...I'm not sure how exciting that would be..." He sounds a little bored.  
  
"Sure, fine, OK, you know what, actually that sounds lovely." She grabs her keys off the counter. "Let me get dressed, and I'll be right over."  
  
"Is everything all right?" he says, concerned.  
  
She picks up a pair of yoga pants that were lying on the bedroom floor and pulls them on. "Fantastic. I need a distraction. I'll explain when I get there."  
  


* * *

  
  
When she arrives, she shrugs off her coat and kicks off her heels so she is barefoot. She's wearing a tank top, and hasn't bothered to cover her tattoos, her scars. She figures,  _why bother, if anyone can understand, it'll be these boys_.  
  
Emery is in a rather tight t-shirt and jeans, sword on his back. He is looking  _mighty_  fine, all dark hair and deep brown eyes flashing. She tries to pretend she's not appreciative of his physique, and is not entirely sure the ruse is solid. His sons, Slevin and Connor, are practicing behind him, apparently focused entirely on one another, though, undoubtably, they have not missed the entrance of this newcomer.  
  
"Welcome...miss." He smiles at her, fangs visible as always. He looks like he wants to devour her. She bites her lip.  
  
Katja tosses a newspaper at him that has been folded back to the following article: "Auschwitz Concentration Camp Survivors Mark Anniversary". He raises one eyebrow, and tactfully says nothing.  
  
"If I keep moving, I can forget for a little while. Let's get started, then." She is already poised and ready for a fight.  
  
Now Emery looks both amused and intrigued. "Hmmm...well." He looks her up and down appreciatively, slowly. She can feel herself being measured, and her spine grows a little straighter under his gaze. "Let's do so. Grab a sword and show my boys how it's done."

Though it's been several years since she last fought with a sword, she shrugs -  _when in Rome_  - flashes a grim smile at him, and goes to the wall to pick one out. He thinks she can't do it, he thinks he's issuing a challenge. She pauses at the rack of weapons before her, feigning inexperience and indecision, and turns back to Emery, mischief in her eyes.  _Maybe it's time to show off a little. It's all fun and games, but they need to know they can't fuck with me._  
  
She walks to the center of the training room, sword in hand. "Blindfold me", she commands serenely.  
  
Emery smiles slyly. "Well. Didn't know it was that kind of night."  He steps behind her, so close it feels like her skin's on fire. He smells good, she notices, and then realizes she's been breathing reflexively. All this time, and it was a habit still. He reaches into a pocket, produces a handkerchief, and calmly blindfolds her. _Of course. Of course he would just carry a handkerchief. Of course he would not even blink at my request to be blindfolded._ At that, she laughs, a deep, throaty giggle. Once the blindfold is secure - his hands barely brushing her hair as he ties it into place, she has to will herself to stand still - she moves into fighting stance.  
  
"Darlings. To me. Begin. Give me all you've got." Katja calls out to the boys, and begins putting them through their paces.  
  
She manages to block and deflect every single attack, and is exceptionally formidable. The longer they come at her the happier she seems to appear, until she is grinning widely, ear to ear. There is a sort of exalted feeling that comes over her, in the fray like this, working the pain in her heart out like poison. It cleanses her. There is only her, the boys, and the fight; nothing else in the world matters.   
  
"Would've made a good Child of Haquim, I'd say..." Emery laughs. He is clearly impressed.  
  
She laughs. "I'll take that as a high compliment. And youd've made lovely Brujah!"  
  
She signals for them to stop, and pulls off the blindfold. "Ah, sweet release." She hands the sword back. "They're not bad. A little noisier than I'd like - I can hear them every time - but with some work...could be quite formidable." She gives him a shrug and a sly grin. "Please tell me this place has a shower? I'ma go get clean. Thanks for the entertainment."  
  
As she walks away, for the first time, he can see her exposed back above the tank top, covered with what looks like healed lash marks and cigar and cigarette burns.  
  
"It's your Elysium, I'm sure it's decked out. Upstairs...and to the left. And by the way...nice scars. You had a good time growing up, it seems."  
  
She looks over her shoulder at him. "Oh, I didn't get these growing up. I got these while I was in the camps. The SS headman took quite a liking to me. I was his..." she looks disgusted for a moment, "...personal plaything. Sixty-five years ago today, I earned my freedom. But I will carry the scars forever. That, and this." She points to her tattoo, six blue numbers on her inner arm.  
  
"We all have our pasts. Mine...pales in comparison." he says respectfully.  
  
She looks down at the floor. "Anyways. Thanks for keeping me company tonight. I needed it."  
  
"Well, stick around...I'd like to see if my sons can serve as well as fight."  
  
She raises an eyebrow. "Oh? Well, in that case...sure." She grins. The boys stand at polite attention, just as devastatingly handsome as their father. She wonders what kind of "service" she'll be getting, and the idea makes her laugh.

 

 

 


End file.
